Online video content leader migrates to MySQL InnoDB Cluster to obtain maximum availability for myTV SUPER on-demand media services.
Background, Business Challenges, Goals
Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB) is one of the world's largest commercial producers of Chinese-language television programs. Headquartered in Hong Kong, TVB operates a vertically integrated business model encompassing content creation, broadcasting, and distribution. In 2016, TVB began a transformation journey from traditional to digital media by launching MyTV Super Limited as a business unit for designing and developing live streaming, social media, and e-commerce platforms.
One of TVB's major products, myTV SUPER, is Hong Kong's leading video streaming service with more than 9.9 million registered users and over 3.2 million monthly active users. However, the company became concerned about the incumbent platform for its billing and support system dubbed BOSS. The BOSS database had replication lags with negative impact on customer experience. Purchased videos would not play because the record was not immediately available in the database replicas.
The company was concerned that if BOSS failed, user dissatisfaction would lead to subscription cancellations and revenue loss. The company started looking for a resilient database that would keep the streaming service running even if a primary node were to fail.
Business Results & Metrics
MySQL InnoDB Cluster was chosen as the solution for delivering high availability. The clustered workload distribution solution resulted in a 30% performance gain for the BOSS database providing operational support to TVB's flagship live streaming, video on demand (VOD), e-commerce, and social media platforms.
"Our constant challenge was that the whole database of tens of millions of records might lock and deny access, but the MySQL InnoDB cluster took care of that fear and provide us with increased availability and faster server response time," says Adrian Yeung. "InnoDB Cluster likewise fixed the replication lag in normal database routine maintenance."
In addition, MySQL InnoDB Cluster enables rolling upgrades and scaling up-down as needed.
MyTV Super Limited also enjoys a sharp reduction in recovery time from 4 hours to just 30 minutes with MySQL Enterprise Backup, which contributes to keeping the critical BOSS service always available. MySQL Enterprise Monitor also gives the broadcaster proactive notification of slowdown in any of the three servers or the cluster as a whole. "The Query Analyzer tool of MySQL Monitor allows us to uncover long running SQL queries and let our developers fine tune them, way ahead of any complaint from end users," explains Adrian Yeung.
Hong Kong viewers of myTV SUPER - which offers more than 57 TV channels, extensive video on demand, and playback of live broadcasts within three hours - are now assured of a highly resilient data layer providing constant uptime. "With the excellent outcome of our cluster migration, I think we can work with MySQL to see if there are any new features or products that can benefit us," comments Adrian Yeung.
Why MySQL
MyTV Super Limited decided to run its mission critical billing and subscription system on MySQL InnoDB Cluster. "We found what we needed because InnoBD Cluster can tolerate failure of two out of three servers and the migration protects our investment with less risk," says Adrian Yeung.
Implementation
MyTV Super Limited carried out a proof of concept to determine if MySQL InnoDB Cluster would alleviate the single point of failure problem. After 18 months of testing, the BOSS database went into production on InnoDB Cluster with minimum downtime during the switchover.
MySQL InnoDB Cluster allowed for seamless migration, eliminating the downtime needed in other solutions. "That would have been unacceptable because as our service runs twenty-four seven, it's impossible to afford that much downtime," comments Adrian Yeung.